〈현대의 피에타〉에 내재된 사진의 의미 작용

• 영문명: Signification of Photography in Modern-day Pieta
• 발행기관: 한국예술종합학교 미술원 조형연구소
• 저자명: 문혜진(MOON HYE JIN)
• 간행물 정보: 『Visual』vol.4, 134~163쪽, 전체 30쪽
• 주제분류: 예술체육 > 예술일반
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2007.02.28

영문 초록

We live in the post-industrial society where the real vaporizes and the image remains only. In this image-oriented period, the photograph is the only real thing which consists of reality and transfers our desire. This essay is about a way of reading photograph as palimpsest where all cultural, historical phases are overlapped. Because the problem of reading photography converges on signification not only in the aspect of text-image itself but also in the aspect of social system which produces and distributes the text-image. Among the various levels of photographic semiotics, I preferentially focus on the complex levels of code which image itself contains, and its encoding/decoding issues. Modern-day pieta is the representative image of Benetton’s commercial photograph series in 1992, ‘Shock of Reality’. As the realizing field of signification of photography, this photo paradoxically cross-connects the journalistic photography code and commercial photography code, For in-depth analysis, I introduce some remarkable notions of Roland Barthes’ photographic semiotics and Stuart Hall’s communication circuit theory and finally attempt to analyze complex levels of meaning in modern-day pieta using these theoretical apparatuses. Those are mythologies, the photographic paradox, anchorage and relay of text, systematically distorted communication, three hypothetical decoding positions etc. The very core of the signification in modern-day pieta is the paradoxical double-crossing of professional codes in two different fields, journalism and advertisement. The direct adoption of journalistic photograph in modern-day pieta means that it intends to use the myth around journalistic photography, truism. On the other hand, the apparent transgression of advertising photography code conceals producer’s encoding intention for the higher attention effect. In these points, the professional codes of two fields are used as the naturalizing device which hides the ultimate goal of this photo, commerciality, and operates the myth of humanism. Moreover, modern-day pete relates ideological connotation of other genre to signitication of photography It is the appropriation of pictorial icon that identifies David Kirby as an AIDS patient with Jesus in secret. This appropriation is a powerful suggestion which naturalizes mythological messages like ‘He is a victim’ and ‘All death of human is sublime.’ The connotations of this photo, which include multi-layered oppositional sets like religiousness/secularity, repugnance against AIDS/humanism and humanism/commerciality intensify the heated controversy around modern-day pieta. In this dispute, logo and newspaper articles, which Barthes refers to as ‘text’, relay the signification of photography as the core of the dispute which initiates and develops. After all, diverse decoding positions in modern-day pieta lose their resistant possibility through corresponding to the ultimate purpose of an advertisement, an increase of attention. Modern-day pieta apparently goes against the professional code of the commercial, but actually adapts the code and makes the new rule. In Modern-day pieta, intentionally multi-crossed connotations collide each other and dynamically interact with each encoding/decoding process. By analyzing this photo, I try to practice reading the photograph which produces no less meaning than taking the photograph. Also, I expect to go on a first step to approach the present in which the photograph has already become a commodity and a sign.

목차

Ⅰ. 겹쳐 쓴 양피지

Ⅱ. 신화, 역설 그리고 체계적으로 왜곡된 커뮤니케이션

Ⅲ. 〈현대의 피에타〉, 저널리즘과 광고의 역설적 이중 접합

Ⅳ. 사진 읽기, 의미 작용의 동적 평형